What's the current Windows Phone landscape look like? There's really no better way to tell than by looking at the data from AdDuplex. The cross-promotion network for both Windows Phone and Windows 8 gives us insight that we might not get from places like IDC or comScore. We’ve got the report for this month and so far the biggest trend for this month is that the Lumia 520 continues to dominate.

Telling numbers. Cheap Lumia's dominate the Windows Phone market, with flagship devices taking a backseat. On top of that, Nokia absolutely owns Windows Phone now - more than 90% of Windows Phone devices currently in use are Nokia's. This means that effectively, Windows Phone is now a Microsoft platform in both software and hardware, which comes as no surprise since HTC and Samsung aren't really feeling it anymore.

Also interesting is that Windows Phone 7 is still quite important - almost 25% of Windows Phone devices run 7.x. This means that if application developers want to focus on the latest and greatest alone, they'll have to forego 25% of the already relatively small Windows Phone userbase.

Also reaching a milestone was Microsoft's Windows Phone, which grew an amazing 156.0% year over year. Granted, volumes started from a small base of 3.7 million units a year ago and overall market share is still less than five percent. But Microsoft's efforts, with Nokia's support behind it, helped drive the platform into multiple tiers and price points.

“The winner of this quarter is Microsoft, which grew 123%,” writes Gupta, who says that the Microsoft deal to acquire the devices and services business is a good thing because it will “unify effort and help drive appeal of [the] Windows ecosystem.”

but Microsoft increased its share of the market to 4%. It increased its shipments by 185% to 9.2 million units against Q3 2012, which helped to place it as the second biggest OS in 19 countries, most notably Finland, with a 39% share; Vietnam, with 16%; Italy, with 15%; Thailand, with 11%; Turkey, with 11%; and Russia, with 8%. ‘Nokia’s new Lumia handsets will help shore up this position in the holiday quarter, but Microsoft and Nokia must ensure that momentum is kept up well into the New Year as the acquisition goes through to completion,’ said Jessica Kwee, Singapore-based Analyst.

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the three months to September 2013, shows Windows Phone now makes up one in 10 smartphone sales across the five major European markets*, has overtaken iOS in Italy, and is gaining momentum in emerging markets